Depth Over Distance
by i love alex
Summary: Post 3x22; a story of Elena and Stefan dealing with Elena's vampirism separately and uniquely until finally coming to deal with it together.


A/N: Not feeling too inspired lately and I'm trying to convince myself that it's more to do with the fact that I'm missing the show rather than it having to do with the fact that I don't but! I'm still wanting to write so that's something right? Haha, enjoy:

* * *

He stacks the images on top of one another and like they're seeds, each seems to grow into the next; grow and blend, grow and change. Each perfectly unique, each perfectly clear.

Each as perfectly impossible, now; now they were impossible images.

She's pregnant and beautiful. She's reached her 50's and has chopped off all her hair. Her face is gracefully wrinkled; she's (still) outrageously stubborn. She's old. She's aged. She's lived.

She's everything she ever wanted and then some.

Maybe they got married. Maybe they didn't.

She had a child. Children. Babies that did not belong to him.

He wonders if that'll be the first thing she'll think of in terms of counting her loses as a vampire.

He knows though, he knows and his heart cannot fathom it, that it will be the heaviest and constant thing she will carry with her for all of eternity. Her eternity.

Playing with her stomach once, he had wanted to ask her but couldn't bring himself to get the words out; his throat had ached and closed.

"_Make babies with me." _

They seem to fall away, those images. They seem to rearrange themselves across his mind until he can no longer make them out. Images of memories that will now never happen.

He wants her to be happy. Only.

* * *

Stefan lies across the floor; the house was quiet and dark, the last time he had checked the time it had almost been 3 in the morning. It was now probably four. He lets himself sink across the carpet of Jeremy's bedroom, staring up at the ceiling, unable to sleep. Not needing nor wanting to. His eyes were dark and the room was dark and he was perfectly fine with it being that way for a while.

He goes to listen to her breathing. Realizes that he no longer can and feels his chest cave, slightly, more so, barely, further into his body.

He begins to construct instead, the visions of their future. Finds that all that appears is the past.

Three hours go by.

Maybe they'd leave him there. Maybe they'd never look. Maybe they would let him rest and morn for her and be selfish, be as near to her as he can.

He had no part in bringing her home. He doesn't remember anything other than her opening her eyes and then the entire world going blind. He thinks he might've ran but that doesn't really make much sense to him because he wouldn't have left her there.

Even though he had left her seamlessly once before.

Stefan closes his eyes; listens for her and to her but finds that like her breathing, she's gone externally silent.

There are so many things he wants to tell her; mostly though, that he loves her. That he'll be there for her in whatever way. That he'll leave if she wants him to; that he'd hunt and gather and run away, run forever across the world with her. Teach and show and explore with her.

Just, be with her.

Even though he's lying on the floor in a room, feet away from hers. Unable to stand. Unable to move. Unable to do anything at all but think only of her.

He wants her to be happy; and it's an endless thread that he's followed across his mind, an endless thread of knowing she's not.

* * *

She wakes up in a bed she does not remember.

Could vampires suffer from long-term memory loss?

She lies there; eyes wide open, thinking they surely couldn't. Memory was always present, whatever date, whatever year, time, place, shape, person. Always, always it was present, Stefan had told her.

The room is pitch black but she can make out the cracks of dried paint on the ceiling and that the rim around her light shade was stained with a light coat of dust.

Maybe, maybe they could choose to forget it, she thinks.

Elena goes to place her hands over her heart but stops just before she plants them, instead tucking her hands beneath her body. Forgetting and then remembering all in a shortened breath that her heart no longer beat.

She lies, perfectly still. Hearing things she can't prevent herself from hearing; birds and cars, rain smacking the pavement, quiet voices from downstairs. It's her brother. It's Jeremy. She recognizes his tone and his rhythm and already it's like a flag going off in her head and suddenly the air around her is too thick.

"Just take a breath, Elena."

She recloses her eyes and goes limp, counts to ten. Wishes he'd let go of her.

"Damon," She hears herself say and he releases his arms from the top of her shoulders, stepping back a couple feet until he slumps down into a chair. Like she's just exhausted any and all energy he had.

He doesn't say anything but looks at her, she can feel it even with both her eyes shut and her body turned in the opposite direction; she can feel him watching her.

"You go to sleep again, it'll only feel worse when you wake back up."

It's a strange sensation to feel tears on her cheeks when she doesn't, at all, have the recollection of crying.

"So let me sleep." She whispers as he stands, dropping something to the floor by the bed before leaving the room.

The blood from the cup thickens the air that much more and she's resentful of the fact that the smell of it makes her feels as though she were choking on her tongue; but she's equally grateful for the way it thickens her memory and mercifully lets her fall back asleep.

* * *

Her first sip of blood literally feels like she's drinking liquid glass. Not that she's ever had the pleasure, but it's the only thing in her mind that comes remotely close to attributing the feeling.

Jeremy takes the cup from her after she's gagged but swallowed down at least two mouthfuls.

"Damon said it'll get easier."

She can't find anything to say to him, already curling her body back into the bed, crawling her body into sheets and under blankets. She doesn't want her brother to leave but can't for the life of her, figure out the words to use to get him to stay.

"I love you, Elena."

She licks her lips, tightens her eyes and tries to combat the feelings of rage when she opens her mouth to repeat the words but only recognizes the lingering remnants of dry blood.

* * *

She's ripped two of her pillows already and is tempted to rip a third just to make a point.

She's not really sure what the point entails or why but she's unwillingly to leave this room and was so sick of Stefan unwilling to come to it that surely that was a point in and of itself.

Everyone else had seen her, spent time with her, had tried to convince her that she could survive as a vampire and that she should try living her life outside of a four walled box (or cage, as Damon had so delicately put it).

"Where is he?" She asks him one quiet morning when she's sat up against a lone undamaged pillow and trying not to rip through the paper of her journal with her pen scratching across the pages.

Damon sighs before leaning over the bed, pulling both the journal and the pen from her hands and throwing them on the floor.

"In a hell of a lot better place than this, that's for sure."

He's joking, constantly, without pause these days but something about it this time seems to rip under that thin skin she's been pretending is too tough to damage and she springs up from the bed, whirling around, glaring at him, doing so in all but a second.

Damon has the courtesy to look a little apprehensive; he knots his eyebrows together and looks like he's ready to say something that wouldn't be anything other than a smart-ass remark. He stands slowly instead and holds up his hands in a peace offering that she takes only by dropping her shoulders and pulling back her teeth.

"Easy there tiger, I'm on your side. You don't think I know that my brother would be the only person who could drag you out of here without you kicking or screaming like a brat the whole way?"

Elena sits on the edge of her bed, letting the information in his words settle on her. If Damon didn't know where he was that either meant he had looked and hadn't been able to find him or that they weren't speaking to one another.

She can pretty much take a wild guess on which one seemed the most logical.

"He's punishing himself." She says down to her hands resting on her lap and even though it wasn't meant for Damon at all, he scoffs in agreement and makes his way over to the door.

"Pretty much. I don't know what's worse really, his sulking or your brooding."

For some odd reason that she can't really place, this statement makes her smile.

"I thought he was the broodier."

And Damon rolls his eyes, pulling on the doorknob, "Well you had to get it from someone and it sure as hell wasn't me."

She watches him until she can no longer see him, following him instead with her ears; his march to the door and down the steps until she can no longer make that out either.

"Come back to me." She whispers aloud, feeling faintly stupid and pressingly lonely; she pulls up her feet and curls her way back into a ball.

_Come back to me, please._

* * *

Bonnie sits down on the floor, a little across the way from where he was lying, and crosses her feet. She sighs but doesn't say anything and he thinks if she were waiting for him to start this, they'd be here for a while.

"What are you doing?" She asks eventually and he can make out the way she's got her head titled to one side, that she's not glaring at him but just, looking at him patiently.

He wants to tell her, wants to tell someone but speaking is hard and getting up off the floor is even harder.

Bonnie then, without hesitation, moves. Rearranging herself to lie with her back along the carpet; there was still about a foot between them but he could've reached out his hand to touch her if he wanted to.

He thinks if he had the energy he would've.

"I know that somewhere in your mind, you always wanted this for her. Maybe not the life style but the chance to remain here forever, for you to be with her forever."

Stefan doesn't say anything, doesn't dare; he's holding his breath.

"But that doesn't make you responsible, it doesn't make you accountable. She would've died and I much rather this outcome, Stefan, than that one."

She says all of this to the ceiling and not to him, which he's honestly grateful for because he thinks if he had to watch her face, believing it would've been even harder.

"You gave her the right of choice and now she has the right of life."

When he feels her hand on his arm, he fumbles, trembling until he catches her hand with his and squeezes, clutching onto it for dear life. He wants to thank her but struggles to remember if opening his mouth was better or worse for the pang against the lining of his chest. So he squeezes her hand and they lie there on the carpet, feet away from Elena instead.

* * *

She starts to write him a letter but stops just after she's written the Dear and the Stefan. Realizing that everything she wants to write him are her hands touching his hands. Are her fingers touching his cheek and outlining his face. Are her lips to his throat and her stomach to his stomach.

There's everything and then there's the idea that if she wanted to, she could leave this room to find him herself. There's everything and then there's not knowing where to look.

The first night as a vampire, she dreamt of her mother and only her mother. On the second, she dreamt of a childhood that did not belong to her but belonged to a child she might have created.

Loss, can cripple you. He had told her.

She's crippled to the point of bare limbs and skin and bones. She's crippled to the point where she thinks she's forgotten completely her memories of this room only to protect herself from something she knows would destroy her.

"Jer?" She asks clearly, when it's the middle of the night and her brother is not asleep on the floor beside her bed.

Jeremy slowly sits up, leans against her chest of drawers and tries to make out his sisters face in the dark, knowing she could see his perfectly.

"What is your first memory of me?"

It takes him a moment, the question catching him off guard but he sighs and swallows and then parts his lips.

"I was 3, you were 6. Mom and Dad refused to let us camp out on the fourth of July to let us watch the fireworks because there was a storm coming. We were mad so we decided to run away but I was too scared to leave so you told me-" He stops, a catch in his throat and Elena, smiling around the memory, speaks even though that catch in her throat is there too.

"I told you that we were going to be fine as long as we had each other."

And she had grabbed his little 3-year-old hand and they had made it as far as the front gate before it began to pour with thick, unapologetic rain.

"Jeremy?" Elena asks again and he brings his hands down away from his eyes.

"I think…I think I'm going to be fine."

He smiles, rubs at a few tears before crawling back over to the sleeping bag that had become his makeshift bed.

It's quiet for a long while until she can hear his heavy breathing, the calm rise and fall of his chest, lulling her, easing her to sleep also.

That night she dreams only of memories and they come to her one by one, all of them, like they had been sitting in her mind, waiting for her to be ready for them all along.

* * *

He puts his hand against the bathroom door and begins to count to five and then ten. He turns the handle before he gets to nine and can't move when the door opens and she's there, lying across her bed.

He wished he would've waited till ten.

Because he needed just a little more air for this, time for this, breath for this. Her.

This.

"Elena." He says, the first thing he's really said in days. Almost a week.

Her body slowly curls back over and she blinks awake, looking at him like she expected him to be there and he looks at her, so carefully, her eyes and her face. Seeing what he's always seen whenever he's looked at her. The reason for why she both scares the shit out of him and makes him feel as though the earth is as easy to hold with his bare hands.

"Well," She breathes, "Are you coming to lay with me or what?"

He must smile because she's suddenly smiling back and before he knows it, he's on that bed and beside her, against her, hiding his head in that corner of her neck where he could breathe and then breathe and then breathe again.

"Elena." He repeats and finds that he's hugging her, "Elena," He breathes and finds her thumbs matching his.

It's a private, quiet way for them to meet; in the early afternoon, along her bed, in a spot so that often only belonged to them.

He hasn't quite understood yet how it is that he gets his entire life with her.

But then thinks that if he had his entire life to think about it, he doesn't really mind not ever knowing why. She had an entire life to live, sometimes with him, sometimes without him.

But it was a life.

He kisses the corner of her shoulder before moving away, resting his head on her pillow and she looks at him through long eyelashes that don't ever seem likely to shorten.

"I missed you." She whispers and her stomach is dancing with butterflies; she feels like she's 14 years old again and discovering what it felt like to like a boy.

She likes this boy a lot.

With his fingers, he curls her hair back around her ear, "I missed _you_."

She loves this boy, a whole lot.

Elena makes it so that their stomachs are touching and their foreheads are pressing together; their toes meet and their limbs linger.

With his arm, he moves it behind him, digging something out of his back pocket. He slips the ring on her finger while kissing her softly and she can't help but feel like he's just promised her something he had told her long ago.

"I will always, always love you." She says and it feels different to all the other times she has said it to him before.

He smiles, even while he's got his lips to her cheek and it takes him awhile to be able to stop.

* * *

A/N: So…I kinda chickened out of continuing this one just because I'm still scared shitless of writing them both together properly, vampire to vampire, so I'm going about it in very, very small doses, haha. I'll get there, hopefully and I have a sneaking suspicion that the show might help me get there.


End file.
